TRENDING
MCAFEE REPORT SHOWS
THREAT ACTOR EVOLUTION
DURING PANDEMIC
COVID-19 has made a stamp on many industries and impacted
business operations on a large scale. We take a look at how
cybercriminals have exploited the pandemic and caused
detrimental harm to businesses for personal gain. Raj Samani,
McAfee Fellow and Chief Scientist, discusses the findings of the
McAfee report in more detail.
McAfee, the device-to-cloud
cybersecurity company, has
released its McAfee COVID-19
Threat Report: July 2020, examining
cybercriminal activity related to COVID-19
and the evolution of cyberthreats in Q1
2020. McAfee Labs saw an average of
375 new threats per minute and a surge
of cybercriminals exploiting the pandemic
through COVID-19 themed malicious apps,
phishing campaigns, malware and more. New
PowerShell malware increased 688% over
the course of the quarter, while total malware
grew 1,902% over the past four quarters.
Disclosed incidents targeting the public
sector, individuals, education and
manufacturing increased; nearly 47% of
all publicly disclosed security incidents took
place in the US.
“Thus far, the dominant themes of the 2020
threat landscape have been cybercriminals’
quick adaptation to exploit the pandemic
and the considerable impact cyberattacks
have had,” said Raj Samani, McAfee Fellow
and Chief Scientist. “What began as a trickle
of phishing campaigns and the occasional
malicious app quickly turned into a deluge
of malicious URLs and capable threat
actors leveraging the world’s thirst for more
information on COVID-19 as an entry
mechanism into systems across the globe.”
Each quarter, McAfee assesses the state
of the cyberthreat landscape based on
in-depth research, investigative analysis
and threat data gathered by the McAfee
Global Threat Intelligence cloud from over a
billion sensors across multiple threat vectors
around the world.
“
THE DOMINANT
THEMES OF THE
2020 THREAT
LANDSCAPE
HAVE BEEN
CYBERCRIMINALS’
QUICK
ADAPTATION
TO EXPLOIT
THE PANDEMIC
AND THE
CONSIDERABLE
IMPACT
CYBERATTACKS
HAVE HAD.
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